


A Witch's Ordeal

by arioso_dolente



Series: Young Witches [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Coming of Age, Crossover, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Spring
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-02-23 03:37:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23205079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arioso_dolente/pseuds/arioso_dolente
Summary: When Luna Lovegood was nine, she lost her beloved mother.  When Luna was 11, she became a wizard.This is how that happened.
Series: Young Witches [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1060937
Comments: 9
Kudos: 29





	1. New Moon

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't intending to post this right away, because the whole thing isn't finished yet and I wanted to give myself time to work out any plotting kinks. However, the world is in kind of a terrible place right now, and I figured the least I could do was try to brighten it just a little bit. I am continuously working on it, so I will do my best to get out updates in a timely fashion.
> 
> This can be seen as a prequel to A Witch on Errantry. I have been workshopping this with a small group, so I should have fixed any really obvious errors. But if you do notice something, kindly let me know!
> 
> Please read, and if you like, tell me what you think. And wash your hands and stay safe!

Winter is come and gone,   
But grief returns with the revolving year.  
-Percy Bysshe Shelley, _Adonais_

Death is an ache whose remedy rests in Timeheart.   
- _The Book of Night with Moon_ , xv/24

Unlike most prospective wizards, Luna Lovegood knew about the Art from a fairly young age.

Or, failing that, she at least had a pretty good idea, because from the first years of her life, Luna and her mother were inseparable. Pandora Lovegood never outright explained to her daughter what exactly she was doing, but she never made an effort to hide it either.

“There’ll be a snowstorm in two days,” she might say, after slipping back from between thin air where she’d been negotiating property disputes with the Fair Folk, and sure enough there would be. Her weather predictions were always spot-on, her flowers always grew even through surprising bouts of early frost, and her vegetables were never bothered by deer.

These were small things, but they were still entirely unlike the flashy, deliberate magics Luna’s father or the teachers at her informal primary school practiced. Luna almost never saw her mother wave a wand (indeed half of the time she would venture outside without it for an afternoon, come back, and forget where she had left it), nor say any of those funny half-Latin words that she knew adult witches and wizards used. Whenever she saw her mother perform spells, they were always contemplative affairs, spoken carefully in what sounded to Luna like ordinary English, albeit with technical jargon she’d never heard before. Luna had seen her write them out sometimes, long fluid lines in graceful characters she couldn’t begin to read.

Her father had indulged all of this, though he didn’t try to understand it, preoccupied as he was with his own research and his weekly magazine. Only occasionally, such as when at the dinner table Xeno expounded on a theory of a conspiracy of thieving three-legged gnomes, would Pandora get a funny faraway look and say, “Of course, darling,” her voice suddenly, unnervingly serious.  
It was an odd, somewhat distractible childhood, but Luna adored it. She sat at her mother’s side and watched silently as her mother wove spells with only words, or sometimes with the aid of a length of string, a handful of oak leaves, a circle drawn in chalk.

Though Pandora left her wand anywhere and everywhere without a thought, Luna never saw her without the book: an unassuming blue-bound volume with _“Recipes”_ written across it in fading golden letters. She carried that book everywhere, sometimes writing in it with an absent-minded frown, mostly just flipping through it, revealing pages and pages of that graceful script Luna couldn’t parse.

At first, Luna would ask her mother where she was going on those mornings when she tucked the recipe book into her handbag and strode off toward the hills. Pandora always answered her, and Luna never got the impression that she was lying, as some adults did to fob off childish curiosity, but the answers she got never made a jot of sense to her.

_“I’m negotiating with the wind; there’s a wildfire to the northeast.”_

_“I’m writing a glamor for the convention in town next month.”_

_“I’m just keeping the Universe running, that’s all.”_

That one was the most common response, and Luna felt it was the truest one she would ever receive. She continued to ask anyway, delighting in the answers; continued to follow her, trying to decipher her mother’s strange rituals, on those days when Pandora didn’t insist on leaving Luna at home with her father for her own good.

Then came the day, when Luna had turned nine only a few weeks before, when Pandora didn’t come home, when Xeno went after her and finally returned staggering with the weight of her in his arms.

Then the hurt spilled from Luna, flowing like the black script in her mother’s books.

~*~

The Aurors came and went, eventually ruling Pandora’s death a spell accident, meticulously frowning over her mostly indecipherable notes and running test spells over samples of her tea and food, while they sat Xeno down with a fresh pot of Earl Grey, patting his shoulder and speaking softly with him. Luna perched on a dining room chair nearby, eyes wide, unable to say anything in response to their awkward questions.

It took Luna’s father a while to sort everything out, afterward. Neither he nor his wife had ever been particularly organized people, and at first most of Xeno’s attempts at dealing with her possessions involved putting all of them in boxes left in the corner of the sitting room, so he wouldn’t constantly have to look at Pandora’s cotton dresses and overstuffed notebooks and tea-stained mugs.

Luna barely noticed. Truthfully, these days, Luna and her father barely noticed each other at all.

One evening at dinner, her father broke the oppressive silence. “I have something for you,” he said, his speech halting and hoarse. He rose jerkily from the table, to a messy pile that had accumulated in the sitting room as he’d finally begun to pick apart the boxes.

As she’d expected—dreaded—he came back with the blue recipe book tucked under one arm and set it next to her plate. Luna swallowed.

“I know—” he said. “You always loved—” He shook his head. “I think—she would have wanted you. To have this.”

Luna stared at the book until her eyes burned. She darted a glance at her father. Did he know what this meant? Did he see, even now, the way the golden letters of the title shimmered to become that strange cursive that had filled her mother’s notebooks?

His eyes were rigidly fixed on his plate. Luna looked away and decided not to ask.

It hurt more, she discovered, the more she thought about it. The grief was like a wound lodged in her chest that failed to heal. When she was unprepared, when she lowered her guard, her mind would idly turn toward it and she would feel it open anew. It was the only part of her that still felt, because she’d sealed all her joy into it with all the pain. Without it, everything was weary and dull.

But dullness was better than pain.

So Luna left her mother’s book on the highest remotest corner of her bookshelf and refused to look at it. She and her father got up every morning, ate, Luna went off to school and Xeno to his books, and the two of them mostly failed to meet each other’s eyes.  
A year passed that way, and Luna hardly felt it.

~*~

_“She should have told him!” Luna felt her own voice ring in a way she could hardly remember it doing before, staring at the creature before her, willing it to understand._

_The creature only looked at her, sadly. “And that’s your decision to make, is it?” it said, a soft rumble building in its dark furred chest. “You know better, Luna. Life has called you both, but Life calls us to make our own choices, and to respect those of others.” Its deep liquid eyes bored into her. “I think you should ask, what choice will you make? Isn’t it time for you to decide?”_

_Its sleek black shape blurred past her sudden tears. “Why, though?” she said, salt stinging her eyes. “It said I could have her back. Why can’t I just have her back?”_

Luna opened her eyes, breathing out slowly as the dream began to seep away, eyes straying to the cloudy sky outside her bedroom window. This particular April day looked to begin like most others.

She thought so, anyway—it was getting difficult to tell the difference between one day and the next, and going by the silence that still permeated the house like a fog these days, she was sure her father felt the same way. 

The dreams were one thing, though. They’d been getting steadily more vivid in the last week or so, almost as if there was something she was meant to know from them, but on waking, she could never remember enough to figure out the meaning. There were details that changed—words or phrases that changed order or form—but the rhythm of the conversation always ended the same way, between her and the mysterious companion whose appearance she could never pin down. She sighed, staring at the painted stars on her ceiling. 

She got up.

The morning was the usual shuffle of putting on something that didn’t smell too much, methodically chewing on some toast, and kissing her father goodbye (he grunted, not looking up from his printing press) as she took the Floo to Madam Wharton’s Primary School for Young Witches and Wizards. When Madam Wharton let them outside for lunch, Luna reached into her bag for her sandwich and a copy of the Quibbler, frowning when she encountered a hard object she didn’t remember having put there.

“Luna?”

She looked up, distracted.

Ginny Weasley smiled, tentatively, beginning a ritual that had been going on for months. “I was just wondering if you wanted to play Gobstones with me?”

“Leave Loony be, Weasley!” came a shout from across the yard, where some other children were making a valiant effort at Quidditch on toy broomsticks. “She’d rather read that Quibble rubbish anyway.”

Ginny glared back at them, then turned back to Luna. “Don’t listen to them,” she said.

Luna forced her mouth into the same rictus of a smile she’d become practiced at. This too, was part of the ritual. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’ve got my book.” She pulled it out of her bag to prove it, swallowing the start on seeing her mother’s recipe book. How had that gotten there?

Ginny bit her lip. “If you’re sure,” she said. “You know where to find me.”

Luna nodded, her fingers tightening on the book’s binding. Then as Ginny walked away, because at that point she had to, she did the thing she’d avoided all this time. She opened the book and began to read.

To her surprise, the text was not that illegible cipher she remembered spying over her mother’s shoulder, but perfectly comprehensible English. _“A wizard sees the changing of the surrounding world, for good and ill,”_ she read, near the top of a page somewhere in the middle, _“but does not seek to undo it. A wizard protects what grows and lives, though she knows she cannot undo what has already passed.”_

She frowned and flipped ahead several pages.

_“When spelling in regions with particularly dense magical ‘pollution’ for lack of a more appropriate term, it is important to carefully anchor spells within the proper temporalspatial framework. Repeated workings in the same geographic area over time can lead to unpredictable results, but one of the most common for the unprepared wizard is a thinning of dimensional walls, leading to a so-called slipping into other potentialities or histories, which can divert the effect of the intended wizardry. Most wizards in such magically dense areas are familiar with the phenomenon, using the slang term ‘going sideways’ to refer to—”_

What? Luna decided to page to the beginning of the book in hopes of it making more sense.

_“Welcome, supplicant,”_ read the first page. _“If you read this, you possess the necessary aptitude to help slow the death of the Universe. The Art of Wizardry, though dangerous, allows the wizard to—”_

Luna shut the book, breathing hard. _“I’m just keeping the Universe running, that’s all,”_ echoed in her head, sing-song. _“I’m just keeping the Universe running. I’m just—”_

“Hey! Loony!”

Luna looked up sharply. 

Zach Smith hovered in front of her, wobbling inexpertly on his toy broomstick. “Give us that Quaffle already,” he said, pointing at a red ball that had landed in the bramble patch beside her, while she had been silently collapsing, oblivious. “Well?” he said at her confused blinking. “Come on, I can’t. My fingers are all numb, that idiot Harper jammed them, thought he was a Bludger or something. Well, Loony? Are you going to sit there all day with that book? What’s this one about? Two-headed Cats of the British Isles?” He sniggered.

Her eyes stung. _“Don’t hold resentment in your heart, Luna,”_ her mother had always told her. _“That’s the surest way for evil to get in if you do.”_ It was good advice, she supposed, but Merlin, it was so hard. She reached her hand into the bramble, heedless of the white stinging scratches the thorns produced on her dry skin. Her hand found the Quaffle and she thrust it at Smith, not trusting her voice to speak.

He grinned toothily at Luna, and it occurred to her that she’d be wasting her time being resentful toward him anyway. It would be like getting angry at a dog for biting her; he was just too stupid to know better. “Thanks, Loony!” 

As he swerved away on his broomstick, ball tucked under one arm, Luna stared at the damp ground a while longer, unwilling to open the book again, unwilling to see the words again, see _“the Universe, the Art,”_ all the words with their implied capital letters she’d ever heard her mother say and dismissed as nothing, or as peculiarities belonging only to her. _“The Art, though dangerous . . . I’m just keeping the Universe running, that’s all. That’s all. Keeping the Universe running.”_ The sounds were building in her head again.

Was that what had happened, that awful day? Keeping the Universe running? Was that—

“Luna!” It was Ginny Weasley. “Are you all right?” she said. “Only it’s time to come inside.”

“Yes.” She breathed in and out a few times again, trying to readjust herself to the sensation, to existing in general. The pebbled ground was hard beneath her bitten-down fingernails. The sky was still stubbornly cloudy, a day like all the others she’d seen lately, that refused to acknowledge spring. Next to her, Ginny smelled faintly of lavender soap. “I’m coming.” She shoved the book inside her bag and got up, feeling inexplicably angry at herself.

~*~

Whenever Luna was particularly upset—or more than she usually was, these days—she went outside, and usually remembered to find her way back before dark.

Her father, she knew, probably wouldn’t see the sun at all if not for basic necessities of doing the shopping and whatever else he needed to keep the barest semblance of house. Luna seemed to remember him and her mother having people over sometimes, when she was very young, or going out to visit adult friends they knew, but that had been so long ago she could scarcely remember it. She herself had practically grown up feral, rather distant from other children her own age—save the Weasleys, who were nice enough generally, but tended to keep to themselves. She hadn’t felt lonely. She’d had her mother, who understood her as well as any best friend could, or better. They’d had the strange creatures her mother told her about, the ones she’d insisted were river spirits, or fairies _(“They don’t like that name though Luna, you mustn’t call them that to their faces, it isn’t polite”)_ , or whatever else that Pandora always seemed to understand perfectly, and Luna could sometimes, when she was half-paying attention and not concentrating on their actual words like her brain wanted to.

They’d gone into the tangle of woods by the house, where the oaks grew twisted and covered with lichen and bracken, to the stony hills that overlooked the distant village, to the great enveloping moorland where the heather grew wild and purple and the sky seemed to swallow the earth. She’d loved that place the most, feeling like she could almost just leap off one of the craggy hills and feel her feet leave the earth, feel the singing wind catch and carry her away.

She couldn’t go to the moors now of course, that was miles away and she was too young to Apparate as her mother must have done with her (she thought, anyway; that part of her memories was less vivid).

So today she picked her way through the wood, stepping carefully over tree roots and granite boulders. The snowdrops were late this year, she noticed, in that absent, distant way she’d grown used to noticing anything. The overbearing gloom was doing little for her mood. Normally by summer the wood was a riot of mossy green; even now, by spring, there ought to be the pale green points of early flowers. But the only things she saw now were a few stubborn lichens amid the black wet trunks of trees, the remains of dirty snow still patchy on the ground.

Her mother would know. Her mother always knew when anything was amiss in the wild places. Without her, Luna felt moorless, as one does in a foreign country, not knowing the language. Without her, who was Luna to say there was anything wrong at all?  
But something was. She could feel it, an eerie stillness that hung in the air, strikingly like the one she’d grown used to feeling at home, alone with her father and nothing but the gulf between them for company.

It was absence, she realized. This forest was missing something, though she couldn’t say what it was. She knew her mother would have known. She remembered the words in her mother’s book. “Supplicant,” it had said. Chosen to slow the death of the Universe. The anger began to surface again.

This was what the Universe did for its chosen ones? And now it wanted her to be one too?

With shaking fingers, she drew the book roughly from her bag.

She tossed it to the ground, the blue cover stark against the bare mud and snow.

As she started walking, her eye caught a large black shape moving through the trees, but she turned her face firmly away, and headed for home.


	2. Waxing Crescent

_ They were standing in the silent wood, their small shapes outlined in the black and white of bare oak and snow. _

_ “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?” _

_ This time, she could get a clearer sense of its voice, rich and dark, flowing like honey. She looked down, at the blending of snow with her pale naked feet. “I’ve seen something not right,” she said. “Something . . . frozen. Or missing, maybe.” _

_ It nodded. “It’s becoming enough that even mortals can sense it.” There was something . . . antique about its language, she thought. When she tried to pinpoint it though, the exact wording slipped away from her like water. _

_ Something surfaced in her, a strong island of emotion finally after endless seas of misery. “Surely what mortals do and don’t notice shouldn’t matter much, should it?” _

_ It leveled dark eyes on her. “On the contrary, you mortals matter very much.” It sighed, and she was reminded of a star falling, trailing bright white against the black sky. Then she blinked, wondering why it had made her think of that. “We may have had a hand in the making of this world, as you reckon it, but it is you who live in it. It is mortals who have the worldly experience and so ultimately the greater knowledge. This means too, that mortals are sadly the ones charged with mending it when things go awry.” _

_ “Is that what she did?” she said, and oh, the misery was rising again, infinite, abyssal. “Is that why she kept it from him, from us?” _

_ It was implacable. “That was her choice to make.” _

_ “She should have told him! He’ll never see her again.  _ I’ll _ never see her again!” _

_ “Never?” There was a soft purr and the shifting of weight on dry leaves. “I wouldn’t say that, Luna. There’s always Timeheart.” _

Luna opened her eyes, letting out an irritated breath. Today was Saturday, which meant she’d been entertaining thoughts of sleeping in to make up for many restless nights, but clearly her subconscious had had other ideas. Behind the drawn curtains of her bedroom window leaked the bluish light of early morning, and she blinked slowly, defeated. There’d be no hope of returning to sleep now.

After another tasteless breakfast and several hours of attempting to read a novel and finally realizing she’d been stuck on the same paragraph for fifteen straight minutes, Luna piled on her outdoor wear and dragged herself outside, where another identically gray day awaited.

Madam Wharton’s homework assignment for the weekend had been inspired by something she’d called “biology”—apparently something Muggles did instead of Magizoology or Herbology. The children were to find a plant or animal ( _ “Doesn’t even have to be magical!” said Madam Wharton _ ), describe its physical properties in their notebooks, and draw a small picture.

Luna narrowed her eyes, striding toward the small stream that ran from the Weasleys’ property toward the nearby Muggle village. She deliberately made sure to avoid the border of the wood beyond it.

She very deliberately didn’t think of whatever had been stalking just out of her sight the last time she’d been there.

The bend of the stream by Luna’s house was usually a reliable place to catch Plimpies, as the bulbous magical fish were drawn to old potions residue from the upstream magical households. Luna wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the chill as she crested the small rise above it, where she found the stream had a filmy skin of ice still on it. 

Beside its bank, wrapped in a patched woolen cloak, sat Ginny Weasley. “Oh, Luna, hello,” she said. “I suppose you must have had the same idea I did. Don’t worry, I don’t think Madam Wharton will mind if we do the same one, so long as we don’t copy from each other.”

Luna smiled uncertainly, and carefully clambered down the muddy slope to join Ginny, fishing her notebook out of her bag as she did. “Are you looking for Plimpies too, then?” she asked.

“I am,” said Ginny. “For me, it’s this, or the chickens, or the ghoul in the attic, and I really don’t want to go near that thing.” She shuddered. “I thought I would try for Plimpies because I haven’t seen the gnomes that live in our back garden since September. It’s odd, isn’t it? They should usually be out by now.”

“Yes,” said Luna, slowly, “I suppose that is a bit odd.”

“I’ve been writing to Percy about it. You know, one of my brothers who’s at Hogwarts now,” said Ginny. “About how strange the weather’s been lately. Mum’s all worried about it because the chickens have been stressed out and they’ve stopped laying. Percy’s taking Muggle Studies and he says there’s a thing called . . . osun in the atmosphere? I don’t think that’s quite the right word. But anyway, it’s a thing that keeps the Earth healthy and the Muggles have gone and burnt some of it away with their chemicals they let off into the air. He thinks maybe that’s got something to do with it, but he’s not sure, it’s hard to understand.”

“Osun?” said Luna.

“Something like that, yeah,” said Ginny. “But the Muggles know about it though. They’re taking steps to fix it, Percy says.”

They were quiet for a little bit, peering through the sheen of ice, hoping to find something, anything, that moved beneath it.

Luna’s thoughts circled. “Your chickens, you said?” Her voice was faint and dry.

Ginny cocked her head curiously at Luna’s tone. “Yeah, they stopped laying sometime around the beginning of March, and it’s well into April now. Mum says we might have to get rid of them if they keep it up because we can’t keep feeding them if they don’t produce.” She rested her chin in her hands. “I miss omelets. Milk is expensive now too, apparently, maybe the dairy farmers have the same problem.”

Luna hadn’t noticed. Her father hadn’t mentioned the price of milk to her, mostly because her father barely ever mentioned anything to her at all. “Are—I mean, is your family going to be all right?” she said. “That is, with food more expensive . . .” It was no secret at Madam Wharton’s that the Weasleys didn’t have a lot of money, with the way Ginny always wore patched or simple homemade clothes, and tended to give handmade gifts for Christmas and birthdays.

Ginny smiled ruefully. “We’re all right for now,” she said. “All of my brothers are either at Hogwarts or they’ve moved out already, and they’re the ones who eat the most. Percy hasn’t noticed anything odd at Hogwarts and I suppose they must grow their own food there, somehow. Anyway, I think Hogwarts is supposed to get harsher weather than us, since they’re up in Scotland somewhere.”

Luna nodded slowly, turning her eyes back to the stream. “I . . . don’t think there’s anything in there,” she said at last.

Ginny sighed. “Yeah,” she said, “suppose not.” She got up, pulling on her mittens and tucking her own notebook beneath her cloak. “I suppose it’s the chickens for me, then. You’re welcome to come too, you know,” she added, and Luna blinked. “I know—I mean, I’m sure it’s been hard for you lately, but I don’t want you to feel like you have to be all alone if you don’t want to. I can’t imagine how hard it would be for me, if I lost my mum. I know we don’t talk a lot in school, but we could, you know. If you want.”

Just like that, the pain rose like a bubble in Luna’s throat. “Thank you,” she said roughly. She swallowed, trying to get her voice under control. “I think—I think I can find something, though. Maybe next time.” She jerkily slid her notebook into her bag and got up, attempting to brush some of the mud off.

Ginny smiled sadly. “Anytime you like, then.” She waved, and disappeared to the other side of the hill.

~*~

The wood was just as still as she remembered. She stood just at the edge of it, staring at the bare oak silhouettes, where not a scrap of green showed to give them relief. Nothing moved. Even the black shadow she’d seen was gone, leaving only bare twisted tree trunks—twisted, she remembered, because of some great windstorm some years ago. There was no wind now. The silence was ravenous.

“Looking for something?”

Luna whirled, heart racing.

A young man dressed completely in dun-colored clothing stood in the direction she’d just come from. He had large vividly green eyes and a curious sort of cap pointed on either end like the tufts of an owl. “Sorry to startle you, young miss,” he said in a soft throaty voice. “Only there’s not many as would visit the wood right now. None of your kind, anyway.”

Luna frowned. “My kind?”

He waved one hand. Was he wearing animal skins? “Sure. You know, folk not of the forest, or the hills, or the air.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

His hand dropped abruptly. “Well, never you mind about it, then. What is it you’re looking for?”

“I—” Luna looked at the ground. “This will sound silly.”

“Will it?” He cocked his head, and his cap slipped a little. “Why?”

She drew in a breath, but couldn’t make herself say it. Instead, she blurted the first thing that came to mind. “I was looking for something green,” she said.

His eyebrows flew up. “Something green,” he said.

She pulled the notebook from her bag. “I wanted to find something new growing and draw a picture,” she said, showing him the book. He frowned quizzically at it. “Because it’s spring, or at least, I thought it was supposed to be.”

He stared at her for a long while after that, his huge eyes unblinking. “An odd thing for one of your folk to seek,” he said at last.

She let out an irritated breath. “Oh, what is this about  _ my— _ ”

“I’ll give it to you, though, since you ask,” he said, not even noticing her outburst. “Because you remind me so much of a wizard I’ve known, who was kind to me.”

Luna blinked. “A wizard?” she said.

“Hold out your hand.”

She did. He stepped closer and dropped something pale green in her palm: a twig, she saw, with a tiny pale acorn and two waxy tender oak leaves attached.

“Watch over that,” he whispered. “That’s the last like it my master will be able to give me for a while.”

“Your master,” she said.

“Yes.” He grinned suddenly, wild and impish, as he began to skip backward toward the distant hills. “Your folk call him the Green Man.”

She slipped the twig carefully into her jumper pocket. “And what do they call you?” she called after him.

He didn’t reply, or perhaps didn’t hear her, as he had turned around, his feet light and surefooted, his clothes blending with the brown dead grass.

Luna watched his vanishing figure until something cold fell on her nose and she shivered, coming back to herself. She turned back to the wood, her feet finding the secret way easily, the one she’d used with her mother so many times. More coldness—snow, she realized, tentative, silent, untouched by wind.

She found the trio of bare oaks easily and quickened her pace, brushing more snowflakes away from her eyes. Then she halted, her hand clawing at a tree branch in sudden choking panic.

Her mother’s book was gone.

~*~

Luna tore home. She slipped a few times on the slick muddy snow, but she ignored the stains on her palms and clothes, her feet beating a furious rhythm on the ground.

Gone,  _ gone! _ How could she have been so rash, so  _ stupid! _ Her mother’s most important possession, and she’d just thrown it away like old Floo Powder.

 _ A wizard protects what grows and lives_, the book had said. Luna’s eyes grew hot, her vision dissolving in a wash of silvery gray. Well, she’d never do that  _ now_, would she?

 _ Don’t hold resentment in your heart, Luna. _ Now Luna knew why.

She skidded to a stop at the front door, dashing the tears from her eyes furiously. She took in several deep breaths in attempt to slow it, and pushed the door open.

Her father looked up from the kitchen table, startled at the noise. “Oh Luna, it’s you,” he said. “I didn’t know you went out this morning.” He frowned at her muddy clothing, but only said, “Would you like some tea? I was about to make some.”

Luna’s stomach turned guiltily at seeing the bound leather notebooks spread out on the kitchen table, their pages covered in her mother’s handwriting. She pursed her mouth shut and nodded, plodding over to the table to take a seat, her eyes fixated on the books and their strange incomprehensible script, light and fluid as Arabic.

Her father busied himself with putting a kettle on the stove and spooning the tea into the old cracked teapot. Luna busied herself with clutching her chest with both arms, trying not to shake and break down again.

“I was just going through your mum’s things,” said her father, his voice determinedly steady. “All these books . . . I wish I knew what they all meant. There was so much about her that I never knew. I always thought—I thought she might tell me one day. Or that I could ask her. But I never did. I thought there would be time.” His voice cracked, but when he turned around again his eyes were dry. His mouth turned up in a painful smile. “Don’t you disappear too, now. I know I haven’t felt much like—like talking now. But please. Please talk to me.”

Luna inhaled sharply. “I—” she said, suddenly wishing she was back outside, feeling awkward around Ginny Weasley, or alone in the depths of the wood, with only the wanting silence to comfort her. “I don’t think—I don’t think she would be very proud of me.” The tears bubbled up again and she squeezed her eyes shut against them.

“Oh, Luna.” Her father hurried over and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sure that’s not true. She loved you. You were her world.”

She clutched his robes with both hands as her breathing reached a gasping rhythm, a faint echo of her earlier desperate dash homeward. “I feel—I just f-feel like there’s s-something she wanted me to do.” She heaved another breath. “But I didn’t listen, and now it’s too late.”

“Luna,” he whispered. He gently drew her back so he could look her in the eyes. “I don’t know why you would think that, but I know your mother wanted you to be happy. That’s all she wanted for you. It’s all I want for you too. All right? You make your own choices. I know you will make mistakes. But if you learn from them, and you try, then there’s no way you could ever disappoint me. And I know it would have been the same for her.”

She burrowed back into his chest again. “I know it’s hard,” he murmured. “It’s hard for me.” He stroked her hair, shifting his head in the direction of the window. “She loved the springtime, you know, it was her favorite season. But we will always have it, if we wait for it. Soon it will be spring again,” he said. “We’ll see the sun again. Don’t you worry.”

After a while, the kettle sang and Xeno got up to pour it. Luna sipped her tea, letting a trickle of warmth settle within her.

~*~

Xeno managed to coax her into changing out of her muddy clothes and having a warm bath before going outside again, and Luna had to admit it did make her feel a little better. She’d dropped her school notebook somewhere along the path home, and she wanted to at least get in her drawing of the oak twig and feel like she’d accomplished something today.

She found the notebook lying open facedown at the edge of the wood, its pages mussed over the dry grass but otherwise unharmed. She had just bent to dust it off and straighten the ruffled pages, when she heard a soft voice.

“Well, that didn’t take you very long.”

Luna looked up to see something like a shadow moving through the oak trees. It resolved itself into a large lithe cat the size of a panther. Its fur was a black that seemed to swallow all the light beside the white snow. On its chest was a patch of brilliant white like a star. That, and its eyes, large and dark but seeming to contain some inner spark of their own, were the things that drew her stare the most, and she felt she would have a hard time tearing her eyes away from them.

It opened its mouth, revealing long elegantly white teeth. Then it spoke and her eyes widened to register the source of the voice. “I suppose I should remember how the young are always in such a hurry, though.”

Luna clutched the notebook to her chest, her brain suddenly unable to decide if what she was feeling was fear or something else entirely. “W-who are you?” she said. She felt it would be impolite to say  _ what. _

The cat lifted one lip in what could have been a snarl, but somehow gave the impression of an approximation of a smile. “I go by various names, among the humans who happen to see me. The Beast of Bodmin Moor. The Beast of Buchan. The Beast of Exmoor.” Its ears flattened. “Such a creative lot, your kind.”

“Do you live in any of those places, then?” said Luna.

It waved its long velvety tail dismissively. “I go where I wish, and where I’m needed. It seems I’m needed here.” It gave her that strange almost-smile again. “I suppose if it pleases you you could call me the Beast of Devon. It’s as good a name as any.”

“You’re needed here?” said Luna.

Its dark eyes bored into her. “I should say so,” it said. “You need me.”

Luna found herself with nothing to say.

“I should clarify,” continued the Beast, “that I realized you were at an impasse and feeling some distress over it. I arrived to alleviate it.”

Her eyes widened. “How could you possibly know,” she whispered. “About—about the book and—what did it say? Slowing the death of the Universe . . .?”

“The Art of wizardry,” it said, “yes. I believe your distress comes in some part from your misapprehension of what that entails.”

It stepped closer, its massive paws making no sound on the bare ground. As it drew near, Luna sensed a buzzing electric warmth coming off its fur in waves.

“You see, the essence of wizardry is choice. No wizard who takes up the Art does so unwittingly—the Powers That Be who grant them that Art are always careful to teach them the gravity and the costs before offering the Wizard’s Oath, because the wizardry itself would allow nothing less. As the saying goes, wizardry does not live in the unwilling heart.” The Beast blinked slowly, eyes still locked on hers.

“Then,” said Luna, “then, my mother—”

“Yes,” said the Beast. “Your mother had chosen the wizard’s Art, despite the costs, because she believed the cause worthy. That book you speak of was her wizard’s manual, which contained the repository of spells she used to practice her Art.” It tilted its head, regarding her silently for a moment. “I believe your distress was some notion that you were required to continue her Art? It need not be so, if you do not wish it. No Power here or anywhere else would force it of you.”

Luna finally tore her eyes away, staring at the ground. “I really don’t know,” she said. “I think I may have decided too soon. I didn’t really know what it meant, throwing her—her  _ manual _ away.”

“It is generally unwise to make hasty decisions,” said the Beast, its smooth voice neutral.

“Yes,” said Luna quietly. “I know that now.”

The Beast continued to look at her for a while longer, until Luna began to shift uncomfortably. “Very well,” it said at last. It turned and ducked its head behind one of the oak trees at the forest’s edge. It emerged again with the familiar blue book clamped in its jaws.

It laid the book at her feet and met her eyes again. “I took it away because you did not want it, and in that moment you had made your choice. But if haste has caused you to regret and be distressed, let this comfort you. Study it again, and make your choice, and be at peace with it. This is all the Powers would ask of you.”

Luna bent and with shaking fingers took the book. “Thank you,” she said.

The Beast nodded its great head. “I will be here as long as you have need of me,” it said. “Should you wish me to go, I will go. Until then, go well.”

And it turned and flowed back into the trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you think!


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